There continues to be an increase in demand for orthodontics to diagnosis, prevent, and/or correct malpositioned teeth and jaws. One of the primary methods for correcting malpositioned teeth and jaws is the application of orthodontic brackets (also sometimes called braces) to a patient's teeth. Each orthodontic bracket is affixed to a tooth and wires and/or bands connecting the brackets are used to realign the patient's teeth and/or jaws.
The orthodontic brackets are typically manufactured in bulk and include a handful of preset design options. These pre-manufactured orthodontic brackets are not designed so as to precisely fit the patient's individual teeth nor are they designed to correct the patient's particular malpositioning. Thus, an orthodontist will generally survey a patient's teeth and select a preset design option that either most closely fits the patient's teeth or is most suitable for the correction mechanism the orthodontist wishes to apply. However, the use of non-personalized orthodontic brackets leads to non-optimal results, where individual teeth cannot be precisely realigned. For example, with non-personalized orthodontic brackets the amount of force applied to particular teeth can be either insufficient to properly realign the teeth resulting in delays or failure; or unnecessarily high causing unnecessary pain to a patient and potentially damaging the teeth.
Moreover, the non-personalized orthodontic brackets are difficult to affix to the teeth with the accurate and precise positioning needed to optimize correction of malpositioned teeth and jaws. In addition, the non-personalized orthodontic brackets can also become detached from the teeth because they weren't precisely affixed.